Is Wal Mart the store we love to hate, or hate to love?

People love and hate the Glenmont Wal Mart. Some feel both ways. Do those miles of aisles make you sweat with glee or fret with worry that you’re going to get carjacked in the parking lot?

Here’s an item from Sunday’s paper?

Those police calls keep coming
The problem didn’t go away.
Bethlehem police have spent a lot of their time handling calls at the Glenmont Wal– Mart since it was built in 2004. A developer pitching the project said there would be three or four police calls to the store every month.
But a Times Union analysis found that many more happened on some days.
The store was originally open 24 hours a day, though it cancelled its overnight hours about a year ago. Police at the time indicated that it was because of the amount of calls. Wal– Mart spokesman Philip Serghini said store hours in Glenmont were modified in part because of concerns raised by the police department and the supervisor about police calls to the store, but did not elaborate.
Town police Lt. Tom Heffernan said the amount of calls to the store remained consistent in 2008. He said there was an uptick surrounding the holidays as well, which is not unusual for any store.
A perusal of the police record logs indicates that authorities still make many visits a week, mostly for petit larceny. The store has had numerous shoplifting incidents as well as fights and some robberies.
The Wal– Mart store had an average of 392 police calls per year, according to an analysis of police incident reports from 2004 through 2006.

It has nothing to do with “elitism”. I’m an imported resident and from day one i’ve heard stories about the negative vibes around the adding of Wal-mart. I have spoken with numerous “in town” residents who refuse to visit the store or will only visit late hours or very early morning (in reference to times the buses run). I shop regularly on my lunch at the East Greenbush Wal-mart and do not get nearly the same vibe or stories about it.

Certainly buses are not the stores biggest issue (ie. long lines or dirty/empty shelves and isles), but saying it’s not a factor is close-minded.

So many violent crimes occur at Wal-Marts all across this land, on a very regular basis.
I do some work with Wake-Up Wal-Mart; we saw a story recently about a former security guard admitting that customer safety was absolutely not a part of their job. Sure, they’ll call the cops sometimes– generally when they’ve detained a shoplifter. It’s all about the merchandise, and separating the people from their money. Why would anyone venture into that environment?

How many of the crimes occurring at Wal-Mart involve employees of the store? How many times were the police called by Wal-Mart to deal with irate customers? I heard about a group of young boys getting arrested at the Glenmont Wal-Mart for opening the boxes of some toys to play with them. Granted this behavior is punishable but were the police necessary? A shopping experience at the Wal-Mart in East Greenbush or Albany does not seem to be as bad as the Glenmont. Maybe this problem involves poor management and bad hiring practices at the Glenmont Store.

#18 hit the nail on the head. The buses are coming right out of one of the poorest parts of Albany. As soon as the bike trail is in, they won’t need the bus. If I remember there was a police blotter (the link is in the blog somewhere) that showed that the majority of arrests made at Walmart were Albany residents, not Bethlehem residents.

Attempting to post this comment again I would just like to say Kate where did you get those stories from? My family has lived in Delmar forever and although some of those things have occurred here… they weren’t Bethlehem residents! They were people who simply got caught by the great work of the Bethlehem Police Department!!

#39 I’ll try to find them when I have a chance. The most recent should be easy to find — off duty detective who is a Bethlehem resident according to the TU story. His name is George McNally. Jeweler story is from about a year ago, had to sell his residence to pay restitution. I don’t have the physician’s name handy. He preyed on young boys. There are other stories……

Kate, I stand corrected on the police officer as I did find out he his a resident of the town even though he has never worked for the town.. he works for a police department that has more problems than this town. However I did spend a great amount of time looking for ANY information about the jeweler who resided in Delmar and the physician and was shorthanded in all my research.

Even so lets increase the number to 10. If there were 10 bad apples in the town would it really effect things? I’m not sure if you read this story… but Delmar was voted as one of the great places to live (3 bad apples or not)…

P.S. I’m pretty sure the Bethlehem PD did not solve any of these cases. (Colonie PD, most likely on two.) And in the case of the off-duty drunk driving detective who lives in Bethlehem, the Bethlehem cops actually drove off, and the police union took over.

My last post didn’t get listed. I have a very simple solution to drastically reduce the crime at Glenmont WM. Anyone who has spent much time at the store, and can be honest, will admit that store attracts people from a low socioeconomic place. Between the profanity, unruly kids, and big family units, it’s quite apparent. Novel idea, why not build a Wal-Mart superstore in downtown Albany at the convention center scandal site. Why is there not a single Wal-Mart within the city limits but they skirt the city? The Albany cops could be involved during the approval process and have it all set up with cameras and a police substation. That way they can quickly process all the criminals and even set up bonus parking lot stings (taking over from Bethlehem and Colonie police) to catch alleged internet predators such as the former UN weapons inspector, Delmar’s Scott Ritter. Maybe then, people who can afford better would actually choose to move close to downtown. Imagine that, if you could live and work in the city and walk somewhere to buy groceries and merchandise? It is amazing that the TU can expend effort to research the Boys Scouts as stated in the recent article “The latest Boy Scout tax records obtained by the Times Union show the council’s former executive made $124,803 in salary and benefits in 2006” yet they wont investigate the crime wave that is hitting these stores that skirt the city of Albany.

I don’t think that anyone believes that Bethlehem is immune from crime (ask 20/20 about that one), but surely you’re not going to try to compare numbers of crimes committed by Bethlehem residents versus Albany residents? Not my argument, but I think that people are saying that the presence of Walmart has increased the number of crimes in th area (fact) and that most of those crimes comes from people who are not Bethlehem residents (also fact). I happen to believe that most people who are against Walmart are more compelled by abstract, philosophical reasons, rather than real-life practical ones, but I also don’t think that they are wrong about the increase in police action.

This is by no means a defense of Walmart, but I’d venture that before Walmart arrived, similar incidents occurred at Glenmont Plaza, although probably not as many. The department stores there were/are smaller than Walmart.

Stop in to town court when it’s in session. I don’t believe that you need a “special invitation” to attend. It’s open to the public.

I’ve spent time there, and in Albany city court, over the years as an “observer”, just to find out what was really going on.

’tain’t all traffic tickets. And occasionally you just might meet some people you didn’t expect to meet! 😉

For all the Wal-Mart defenders out there, I have accessed some actual FACTS and unbiased studies (independent and not paid for by either big box retailers or anti-sprawl advocacy groups). Before I present them, I’d like to observe that if you like a business model that rapes land, drives small local businesses out, undercuts the competition then RAISES prices when they become the only game in town, imports toxic toys and chachkas from China, exploits Third World sweatshop labor, thereby putting hard-working Americans on the street and dictates to its own employees whom they had better vote for (actually occurred during the last election and–surprise—it wasn’t Obama), then by all means, welcome Wal-Mart to your town.

· A Planning Commission subcommittee study of Brattleboro, VT found that large scale retail development results in a net annual revenue deficit of $468 per square foot, mainly to finance higher road maintenance costs and a greater demand for public safety services;
· Many communities, such as Pineville, NC, had to raise taxes to make up the revenue deficit caused by large-scale retail development;
· A study of several communities in Iowa found that 84% of the sales at new megastores came at the expense of existing local business;
· A study of rapidly growing communities in coastal Maine found that big-box stores spent only 14.1% of its revenue within the local and State economies, mostly on payroll, while locally-owned businesses spent at least half their revenue locally;
· An independent study in Chicago found that locally owned businesses contribute 70% more to local economies than national chains;
· A study of Concord, NH published in 2001 found that tax revenue declined 19% over 12 years because of the harm to local businesses and depressed property values from the growth of retail;
· Once “big-box” stores drive out their competitors, they raise their prices. A study of Wal-Marts in Virginia found that price variations were as much as 25%, correlated with the existence of competing businesses.